What’s that said of fruitcakes? That only one fruitcake is made and sold come the holidays, but it gets regifted time and again from one recipient to the next.
The same thing could apply to those guns found beside victims of extrajudicial killings and police shootings. Is it possible there is only one handgun, but it gets dropped at the scene of a killing, only to be picked up by investigators and recycled for the next attack? The purpose of these handguns is obvious: to show that the victim fought back (“nanlaban” in copspeak), thereby justifying the killing.
Latest to fall in a “shootout” with police is Mayor Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte.
Espinosa was shot dead in his cell at the Baybay Provincial Jail in Leyte, together with another prisoner, one Raul Yap, by operatives of the PNP’s Criminal Investigation and Detention Group (CIDG) Region 8.
Espinosa and Yap reportedly fired at the police who were serving a search warrant on them. No other inmates were hurt, and there were no reports of police getting hurt or killed.
If the Albuera mayor was a well-known and notorious drug dealer who tolerated and coddled his son Kerwin’s wider operations, he seemed to have displayed incredible stupidity in thinking he could shoot it out with police in prison with little or no possibility of escape.
So what’s up with this fishy tale of a gunfight inside a jail?
The CIDG Region 8 chief, Supt. Melvin Marcos, said the police encountered “resistance” from inside the jail when they showed up. And when they approached the cell where the mayor was, Espinosa and Yap began firing at them, he said.
Marcos said an inquiry will be made into the “alleged noncooperation” of Baybay Jail personnel and how Espinosa and Yap were able to sneak drugs and weapons into their cell. But shouldn’t the CIDG have done a thorough investigation into these allegations, especially the loyalty of jail personnel, before launching an operation there?
As it is, the CIDG personnel would appear to be among the luckiest law enforcers on the planet, having walked away unharmed after being shot at in a place where they couldn’t have expected guns in the hands of inmates.
Or is there another story behind the shooting? There are reports that Espinosa was about to reveal the identities of some 30 personalities supposedly engaged in the drugs trade, “among them a senator, police and congressmen.” It is said that Espinosa had requested a transfer from Baybay, allegedly because of security concerns.
Other reports say Sen. Leila de Lima is in another list of personalities who received drug money from Kerwin Espinosa, a list that the mayor was supposedly ready to reveal. But if so, shouldn’t the mayor have been better protected, considering that he would be implicating an official the Duterte administration is gunning for?
Anyway, no one knows for now, or has gone public with, the guns that Espinosa and Yap allegedly used to fight back.
But the ready availability of the handguns found at the scene of drug shootings, especially those conducted by supposed assassins and hit men (and women), in the hands of both victims and perpetrators, seems to me a very good argument for gun control.
For more than 20 years now, I’ve written on the “Gunless Society” and the initiatives being taken to limit private handgun ownership outside of the police and military and licensed security personnel.
Law after law has been drafted and presented to supportive legislators, but these have been just as routinely rejected by members of the House and Senate. More than a million signatures in support of the “gunless” move have been gathered. I can imagine that the schoolchildren who signed the first petitions would be young adults by now. But still the “Gunless Society” remains an elusive dream.
Mr. President, just imagine: If the “Gunless Society” law—which would have limited gun ownership and gun-carrying to uniformed lawmen on duty and imposed more stringent conditions for issuing gun licenses—had been enacted, then there would be no need for police to fire at drug suspects, and none or a lot fewer of the thousands of victims so far would be dead. Or is that precisely what you don’t want?